‘Homecoming’ Recap: ‘Meters’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM. YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Make no mistake about it, when you are an outright expert in your field, it absolutely boosts your confidence. Because at that point in your career, all eyes are upon you, and people trust you in every sense of the word and hang upon everything that you have to say because you know what needs to be done in every situation. Which is a wonderful thing for your mental health and your ego. But speaking of ego, while it is lovely to become the top dog in what you do, it is also important that one remains humble once they’ve reached the apex. Because expertise has no room for flash and dash and when someone begins to let hype and ego take over, mistakes can and will be made.
​
As it turns out, the mistakes that come with ego, just so happened to serve as the focal point of the next episode of Homecoming. Because up until this point, Alex has always delivered in regard to her job as a fixer and knowing that she is the best at what she does, gave her quite the ego boost in ‘Meters’. For she firmly believed that she could convince Walter Cruz to stand down in regard to his records request to Geist and well, she laid it on pretty thick in order to make that happen. For she posed as a representative of a charity knowns as ‘Vets 4 Vets’, a place that would offer him bail and a chance to vent, at no cost to him of course, and when presented with the chance to have his bail paid in full with no strings attached outside of beer and conversation, Walter jumped at the chance.
 
Which gave Alex the opportunity to chat with him at Skins, wherein it seemed as though she once again worked her magic. Because she was smooth and helpful every step of the way and did a fine job of selling Walter on why he should forget about Geist and move on with his life. Which is where ego and mistakes come into play. Because she really did believe she had this in the bag, to the point where she was ready to drive home and be back in time for supper. But she underestimated Walter. For while he understood what she was getting at, the truth was more important to him. Which means he was more than ready to make his request for information, in person at Geist HQ, which prompted Alex to double down and use scare tactics to motivate Walter to walk away and that’s when another critical mistake came into play.

Because Alex went into overdrive in order to sell the lie and convince Walter to stop his quest for knowledge, and while she was explaining how everything could go wrong for him by way of a made-up story about the sniper in her unit, an answer she provided to a question about said sniper, gave Walter pause. For it seemed as though she said something that was truly out of line, something that she didn’t notice in the slightest and that was the last straw for Walter. And the fight that we heard so much about in the season premiere took place and off he went into the night, leaving Alex to try and figure out what went wrong and how on earth she could complete her goal and judging from her conversation with Audrey, and the gaze she gave the roller at the end of this tale, it would seem she’s going to resort to some drastic measures in order to complete her impromptu mission.

If anything, this ended up being quite the compelling episode, simply because it really was a fine character study in ego and how it can drive us to new and unfortunate heights. Because Alex really did expect this to be a milk run of sorts, and that Walter was going to be a broken pushover. Which made it quite incredible to see her stumble and fall by underestimating Walter and his strong will and well, now that the fight has concluded and Alex seems to have a plan in place, it’s quite likely we are close to returning to present day. For it won’t be long now before Alex loses her memory and returns to Geist HQ and it should be interesting to see what brings us to the moment where Alex wakes up in the boat without her memory, and what comes next after reuniting with Audrey at the grandiose party back at the office. Until next time.   

---